


Overture

by Lsusanna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: -Ish, AU, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Headcanon, Idiots in Love, Missing Scene, Neverland, Neverland arc, POV Emma, Rule 63, Season 3, almost, cs, fem!Killian, loose definition but still, mentions of Liam Jones the First, three cheers for lesbian Milah, whatever happened to the indians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5887729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>IH WHICH Neverland's weather can affect mood, Liam Jones is a no-fly zone, Eric is more observant than he'll ever admit to, and he and Killian are a magnet and refrigerator, respectively, to great chagrin. </p><p>OR</p><p>Quasi-platonic flirting via eye contact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overture

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly headcanon dump in fic form. It turned into Rule 63 CS and a musing about their earlier dynamics. That, and they're both dark, twisty, soulmate-y idiots, and I feel like that isn't illustrated enough outside the Dark Ones arc.
> 
> Those Rule 63'd are Emma, Killian, and Neal.

They’re getting there. They’re closer to a plan. They have Nan, who is alive. They have an escape, in the form of a trapped shadow. And thus, they have…Tinker Bell (weird, his life is so totally weird, geez). His heart feels lighter than it did since Henry was taken, and the oppressive atmosphere of the island seems lifted. Eric isn’t worrying about Nan, the way he has every time he’s thought about her since he was eighteen, and he isn’t worrying about the island, or what Gold is doing, or what Regina might do. And he isn’t worrying about Henry, because for some reason, he knows, he just knows they’re going to find him, soon—he has hope, and he’s letting himself hope. It’s probably stupid and it’s probably wrong, but he doesn’t care. Everyone else seems to be feeling the same way; even Regina isn’t actively scowling.

 

They’re moving campsites, to be safe. David and Mary Margret are holding hands, arms idly swinging as they walk. Eric is mostly observing Hook, who has made approximately fifteen veiled-as-normal-conversation passes at Tink since they broke camp, who hasn’t reciprocated but has slowly gotten more and more irritated, which judging by her expression is exactly Hook’s objective. (The fairy also hasn’t stopped the conversation. They know each other, Eric’s decided; how, he still doesn’t know, but they do.)

 

David eventually asks if she can only speak in innuendos; she twists her neck and throws back across her shoulder that anything is an innuendo, if you think long and hard about it. Tink immediately looks like she’s about to shove the woman’s own hook into her neck, Mary Margret groans a moment later, and Eric, like David, isn’t sure why—

 

He snorts, undignified and loud. Hook looks at him, smirk becoming less defined, and Eric can just barely make out the dip of shadow and light of her tongue behind her teeth, and he can imagine the intricacies of the phenomenon, having experienced it himself; knows the feeling as it thickens, flattens out and fills the gaps between your teeth.

 

(He has and has not thought of kissing her when she came down from the Peak with David, and has not thought about what it means because it means nothing; right now, he isn’t thinking about anything at all, just letting things exist, letting her fill a role in an unnamed dynamic.)

 

(She fits.)

 

Mary Margret is staring at him, Eric can feel her on the back of his neck, but she has been for a while. He turns, and catches that Nan was too, in the split second before she turned away. Any other time that would prompt a reaction. Now, it doesn’t. He is filled with too much calm.

 

(Or maybe the mood is lifted because the sun rose just a little brighter this morning, in that its rising was discernable before it was midday and directly overhead, but in a place like this, like Neverland—that’s palpable. That’s enough.)

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They find their way to Pan’s camp, but don’t count on the protection spell.

 

That night, it’s dark. That night they find out David can never leave the island. That night Mary Margret doesn’t say a word to him. That night, Eric sits on a log at the edge of camp, nearly out of reach of the fire, and Killian sits down next to him. Offers him a drink. He takes it. (He nearly doesn’t, because _she knew_ , she knew and she took him up that peak, but he gets it. Gosh, he gets it.)

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

It’s Nan’s suggestion, to go looking in the camp of the natives. The island is alive with magic all its own, and they discovered a lot of it, and most of that before Pan ever arrived in Neverland.

 

“Why haven’t we seen them?” Mary Margret asks.

 

“They were killed off. A long time ago,” Nan replies.

 

Eric notices—not a _lie_ , but not a whole truth, and he would press for it on principle and paranoia alone, except he doesn’t see how it could be relevant. Except Hook is staring at her in a way he can’t quite place but somehow knows isn’t benign, and Nan for all the world doesn’t notice, but she has that uncomfortable look on her face, that pressurized shame under an accusation. The look she wore when she was telling them about how she found them, about the dark one castle and her father’s dark magics and crystal ball. Eric wonders what it means.

 

(But whatever it means, he doesn’t think she was ever not going to mention this possibility. Because it’s for Henry, and she’s the one who prompted Pan’s new fortifications going in guns blazing with Gold, and she’s the one who gave him up, and she’s the one who hasn’t yet gotten to really know him, and she might be even more desperate than Eric is, which is—geez, that’s saying something. Maybe two somethings, but he hasn’t thought about that, because a week into his sentence he nearly got shanked by a guy with a tattoo under his eye and he hasn’t forgiven Nan for that, not yet.)

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They take the ship, sail a semicircle around the island. Hook apparently knows the place they’re headed to, because Nan never gave her directions, and even if she had, they would have been for traveling over land. Eric happens to be standing by the steps leading up to the wheel, watching David watch Mary Margret, who ignores him but clearly sees him, and watching Nan interact with the ship. Her map-making skills needle at the back of his mind, and he looks up to the helm and Hook, but is distracted into a new train of thought by the dark look on her face, the black shadows clinging under her brows as she steers the Jolly Roger around the coast. He wonders what it means.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The camp, or village, or whatever it was is abandoned and overgrown, but obviously there. You can still see the signs of its being destroyed, before it was abandoned. Which is just the way of things, in Neverland; even the constant that can be found all over Earth, of nature burying traces of man like quicksand, of plants consuming settlements the minute they’re left, can’t be found here, even though it’s probably been centuries. Time stands still, on the island.

 

Pan clearly only cared about destroying the people, so they look for the things, whatever seems potentially promising.

 

Or, they try to.

 

They barely make it a yard past the tree line before a teenage girl streaks out from behind a bush with a raw yell, crashing into Killian and landing her first punch before they even hit the tree they careen back into. She doesn’t stop until David grabs her and lifts her away, arms pinned to her sides, thrashing and kicking empty air as she screams in a language Eric doesn’t speak, and he gets the absurd impression of a child having a tantrum.

 

She seems willing and capable enough to kill David if it means getting back to Hook, and so Regina ends up freezing her in place, the air around her shimmering.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“It was you?” Mary Margret nearly gasps.

 

(There is a protection spell around them, cast by Regina with a strand of Tiger Lily’s hair. It moves and expands with the group, and works against only her, like a physical restraining order.)

 

(When they left the remains of the village, she watched them go, quiet and regal and vengeful-eyed.)

 

“I was in Pan’s employ,” Hook replies.

 

“Oh, that’s a great excuse,” Nan throws in.

 

“It’s not an excuse, it’s a reason,” Hook says, looking at Nan, which should probably seem wiser than it does, but it doesn’t, considering the inflection, and the context.

 

“Well, you missed one,” Regina cuts in, clearly expecting a reason why.

 

“I used Dreamshade. I suppose she climbed the Peak. Drank the water.”

 

“Dreamshade?” David cuts in, and Eric figures that’s probably a sore subject for him, considering, and he and Killian have been getting friendlier (they all have) and so he assumes that’s why his father seems so incredulous. “Y-you eradicated a people? With Dreamshade? The Dreamshade that killed your brother?”

 

Hook…darkens, like a sudden meteorological phenomenon. For a moment, Eric seriously thinks she’ll actually kill David, and he isn’t sure why, exactly. He supposes the way she’d been acting had been, to be honest, uncharacteristic, for Hook; not guilty, or even expressly remorseful, but she’d…acknowledged wrongdoing, at least. Eric doesn’t notice that till she stops, tips her head back and looks at David in a way that manages to be murderous and amused and sarcastic and sexual, all at the same time. “Only _mostly_ ,” she answers, a witticism, but underneath like it’s a challenge, or proof. “The chief, for example, had his head hung from a tree.”

 

It’s the kind of thing that makes you think someone would storm away after saying, but Hook doesn’t. Eric doesn’t think she’s the kind. She stays, still looking at David, a little too intently for it to truly be that same sarcastic, remorseless approach Eric thinks she’s going for, so it’s more like a dare, and he still isn’t sure what she’ll do if David takes it.

 

“And you didn’t think this worth mentioning?” Regina asks, either unaware or uncaring of the shift that seems to have snared more than half of Eric’s focus.

 

“Well, in my defense, I _was_ under the impression that I killed them all,” Hook says, exaggerating the words a little, turning to Regina by swiveling on her heel. (There’s something there, between them; a connection, and it sometimes looks dark to Eric, though he supposes that’s to be expected from those involved. He wonders what they did together before Hook turned to Cora.)

 

“Oh, well, in that case—” Nan remarks, nearly accuses.

 

“Oh please, you’re not in high school,” Regina snaps.

 

(Except as Nan says it, there is a split second where Captain Hook wavers on Killian’s face, and Nan has been _uncomfortable_ like Eric hasn’t seen her outside of Gold’s company, and Eric’s beginning to think it was never really about him.)

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

 _He_ comes up to _her_ , this time, joins her as she leans against a tree and stares out at the jungle around their camp. She looks at him, and smiles in greeting, looking both more and less vulnerable than she would have without the mottled, bloody bruise spread over her cheek and the bridge of her nose, or the dried blood collected around her hairline and nostrils. (For all the hard hits she had taken from Tiger Lily, and for all that she had unfocused and wavered and propped herself up against the tree, she hadn’t fallen, or lost consciousness. She’d stayed standing, buoyed by thick principle. Eric had never wondered if she had thrown their fight, by Cora’s portal, but now he does, and in context, it bothers him.)

 

She’s back to normal, as far as he guesses that goes. She’s still closer to the Hook he knew while in Storybrook, as opposed to Neverland, in that she’s mostly dark sardonicism, but at least not…foreboding. (Eric wonders if it’s what she’s slipped back into, or if it’s just for him. Wonders if she is consciously nicer to him than anyone else. Wonders if it’s for a reason, or just because he’s the only person she likes. Wonders if she would be nice to him anyway, or if it’s just because he hasn’t done anything to her—and considering the only time she’s turned the threatening edge on him was that time in Gold’s cell in Mist Haven, he assumes the latter.)

 

He doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t know what to say, and because he’s never been the kind to know. (Because he’s waiting for her to fill the silence, because if they were ever to have a thing, that would be their thing, because in the unofficial three-legged race they’re not even in, she’s the one to put her right foot forward and drag him along.)

 

(It takes her a while, long enough that he starts to wonder if she’s going to say anything at all, and that’s—he doesn’t know what.)

 

She tells him that it used to look different, when she came here the first time, and even after. That Neverland used to be a haven, a dreamland, bright tropical sun and vivid green palms, white sand and turquoise waters. It changed. Pan changed it. Not just Pan, she amends.

 

(She hadn’t hit Tiger Lily back, either. More, he even remembers the hook flashing up and her knees shifting down, because she has a remarkable dodging instinct, but she had suppressed it, and stayed still.)

 

(He wonders if he’s the only one who notices these things, wonders if that means somethi—)

 

What he sees in her isn’t guilt, more resignation; not quite remorse, but _loathing_. It makes something catch in his throat; he isn’t sure what, but it’s something he’ll blame on his savior instincts, and it makes him want to say something, but. What does he say? ‘It’s not your fault’ isn’t even true. ‘You’re doing good now’ is a moot point and something he’s afraid to say, because he feels like if he does she’ll slip away.

 

‘I’m not blaming you’ is…well, it might make her feel better, at least. Not that should, because why should his opinion of her matter anyway?

 

And not that he’s said it yet, because he doesn’t... What? What doesn’t he want to do? Let her know he gives a rat’s ass? She’s got little enough in the way of people as it is, he should want to do that. The only reason he wouldn’t is if he thought it would mean something, so what doesn’t he want to do? What doesn’t he want her to think?

 

She notices him not saying anything. She gives him a smile, and he—he wants to give it back, he doesn’t want it, because it’s different, it’s not…he doesn’t know.

 

And now he does open his mouth to say something, because, again, he’s feeling an urge to intervene upon seeing her blame herself for something that isn’t true, because it isn’t, he really hasn’t gone back to seeing her as a villain, and he doesn’t want her to think he has, even though to _lose_ something you have to _have_ _it_ in the first place.

 

Because she’s smiling wry and accepting, and he isn’t _actually going anywhere_. He feels a rush of contempt at her for placing so much in his silence, putting that much pressure on him, and he wants to tell her that she’s wrong and that he doesn’t _mean_ anything, but.

 

He doesn’t want her to think that, but everything has a flipside, so, then, what does he want her to think?

 

(He wonders if he reads far too much into her, them; because it’s impossible for two people to say so much without saying anything, and there isn’t anything _to_ say, there is no _them_ , there isn’t anything about this that should be so damn _complicated_.)

 

She looks away, and he feels like something just happened that he might possibly regret, later, and he doesn’t know why. _A one time thing_ burns at the back of his throat, like a shot of whiskey; like rum from a flask.  

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Eric spends his time on the return journey settling and managing the Lost Boys, as does everyone else, except Hook, who rarely if ever comes down from the helm. (Not that she needs to—with Tink and Nan and the knowledge of sailing they’ve all picked up, she no longer needs to show them what to do as well as tell them.) Eric supposes that’s significant, because many of the Lost Boys spend their time staring up at her, the expressions on their faces ranging from surprise to betrayal, with confusion, fear, and dislike the bridges between the two.

 

When Eric has free time, he spends it watching. (He’d spend more of it with Henry, but in the still moments, he seems content to park himself next to Regina and doze on her shoulder, and when he does Regina seems to implode, in a good way, and so Eric contents himself with just watching his son, too.) Sailing through clouds is a unique experience, and he makes as many memories of it as he can. He watches Mary Margret watch David, waiting for him to break, and he watches David himself for the same reason. He watches Gold watch Nan from afar, watches him memorize everything she does with a guilty yearning that would be uncharacteristically soft, if it didn’t come across as a dark glare at first glance.

 

And Eric watches Nan. Watches her navigate the ship with practiced ease in the more subconscious moments, and stilted discomfort in the conscious. Watches the awkwardness and its dissipation in her dealings with Wendy, and how she avoids her father, and how she purposefully doesn’t do the same with Henry.

 

This bit isn’t new; ever since New York, she’s smothered eagerness with nonchalance, has looked at him too closely when his attention was elsewhere, and treated him like someone who she’s too guilty to know, and yet can’t stop herself. Eric wonders what it was like to give him up (he hadn’t known about Henry till the knock on the door, because he had purposefully not looked up Nan).

 

He wonders what must have happened to little Bae, to make her fear magic so much. But between Wendy and the ignoring of Gold, he thinks he’s beginning to know. (That’s another reason Eric watches him; part accusation, and part a try to divine what he doesn’t understand, and never can, except to chalk up the mysteries to the darkness.)

 

(In other words, he lets the puzzle pieces fall into place, tries not to admit understanding gives him some sense of closure, and comes close to forgiveness. _Closer_ , anyway. Well. He doesn’t look away when Nan watches _him_ , anyway.)

 

And then there is Hook. (Hook, who is the puzzle piece he can’t quite place, because the way her gaze strays to Nan and the way Nan stiffens when she notices—which Hook notices in turn, and then looks away—seems too… _personal_ , for it to be all to do with the Captain trying to kill her father, or being the reason her mother came out of the closet and abandoned her daughter.)

 

He still has the feeling something broke between them, somehow, and he still finds that pronoun inaccurate. And while he is definitely the kind to stand on that principle, and let it all be, she is something of a puzzle, too. And she looks unforgiving and unapproachable, yes, standing up there at the wheel of her enchanted ship, but upon closer inspection also melancholic, and curiously hollow.

 

(She looks like someone with a screaming fragility in her, and Eric can’t find it in himself to not see that as significant, because the assimilation his minds offers up when he looks at her is of déjà vu, of him staring in a bathroom mirror on one of his very first jobs, his poker face staring back, and realizing what a very good liar he’d become.)

 

So he ascends to the helm anyway, and is unsurprised when she doesn’t make it clear he should leave. Almost everyone else is asleep, by now, and the stars, bigger than on Earth, are hung above and below and around them. That, and the fact that they are yet far enough away that it takes the ship time to pass them by, makes it feel like they’re suspended in a bubble, floating through space. There is no moon, here, and so the milky light that shines down on them comes solely from the stars, surprisingly bright. The masts cut through wisps of cloud every so often.

 

It’s particularly magnificent, and Eric says so, and receives a hum in answer. Which strikes him as uncharacteristic, because from what little he knows about her, this seems like something that would be right up Hook’s alley. He looks at her, and is surprised by the pained expression flitting under her features. He revisits thickness in her hum, and the lack of reaction she has so far displayed in a flying pirate ship—her ship—which had even Snow White and the Evil Queen fascinated. He wonders at it. Like he’s wondered at the origin of the charts she’s been sailing home by, in addition to Nan’s map; like he’s wondered at _the first time I came here_ and _the Dreamshade that killed your brother_ , and like he’s wondered if he was right to put the two together.

 

Eric can’t think of anything to say to that, and leaves his statement as the icebreaker it was intended to be. They exist in gentle banter after that, and he isn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish, but he doesn’t think he did.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They are nearing the edge of the in-between-space when Eric once again feels the need to escape the other inhabitants of the ship. He looks out the porthole in the captain’s cabin with his arms crossed, noting once again that the stars here are visible even in daylight.

 

He turns when Hook comes down the stairs. She smiles in greeting as she makes her way to the shelves of books and scrolls on the other side of the room, behind a desk. Eric wanders over to the table, and starts to peruse the charts and maps Hook piled on the surface in her search for one in particular. Most are of Neverland, and like all the others he’s seen, they’re written in the same spidery handwriting.

 

“These are…good,” he says, as he stares at a peninsula at the southern end of the island, and the surrounding waters, blurbs on the habits and proclivities of the mermaids there covering three corners of the parchment.  

 

Hook shrugs, still searching. “It’s a skill most captains acquire. And I had more than enough time.” After a pause, she adds, “They proved useful.”

 

“I’ll bet,” Eric mutters, and thinks of the box somewhere on Gold’s person, as Hook makes a triumphant noise and pulls out a thin, leather bound book. She lays it on the desk and begins to flip through it, as he moves on to another map. It depicts the coast of a land Eric doesn’t know, and looks older than the others. The handwriting is different, save for the Ns, which swoop in the same way. He intends to ask what country it is, but when he turns to Hook she’s looking down at the book with tight shoulders, and he gets the distinct impression that she’s staring at the map through peripheral vision. He wonders at it.

 

He returns to the porthole as casually as he can; watches as Killian puts the books and papers back on the shelf. He toys with remaining silent. “Thank you,” he says.

 

“For what?”

 

Eric gestures at the cabin with crossed arms, and almost says ‘all of this’, his mouth already taking shape around the first vowel, but he aborts, and instead, “Coming back.”

 

She glances at him over once shoulder. “Anytime,” she says, smiling.

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“As am I,” Hook replies, turning back to the shelves, and she would be flirting again, except her irises are all wrong for it, and he would stop right there, except he’s seized by a determination that may or may not be born of irritation.

 

“You know, whatever you’ve done; you can still fix it.”

 

“You’re the savior, you’re contractually obligated to say that,” Hook replies, turning to face him.

 

“I’m obligated to defeat the villains,” Eric corrects, and lets the _and yet here we are_ hang from the ceiling between them. “You don’t have to let it hold you back.”

Hook smiles, and Eric expects the heavy-lidded smirk, but a quarter of the way onto her face it changes, becomes broad and genuine and lights up her face, and he wonders if she’s honestly grateful, but thinks there’s too much of an edge in the expression for that, like she’s captured irony in the creases under her cheeks.

 

“From what, exactly?” she says. (Until she’d kept the conversation going, he’d been wondering if smiling was an avoidance tactic; and it would have been a good one, because he’d thought of a memory of his, about her bottom lip catching on his.)

 

Eric shrugs. “I dunno.” He notices there is very little space between them anymore; and while she is no longer level with the corner of the table, he is no longer standing next to that chest, so apparently it was mutual. “All this was a good start.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Hook watches him back, now. The few times he’s noticed, she’s nodded to him and turned away, but with an edge in her eyes, like she was humoring him in not winking instead, and so he knows that he did the thing he didn’t want to do, because there’s _more_ , there, with them. Too much for words of commiseration and understanding to be taken any way but romantically, and Eric doesn’t want to go there, again.

 

The evening before they return to Storybrook, Eric glances up at the helm at the feeling of eyes on him. Hook doesn’t bother to look away, this time, and without quite noticing Eric stops what he’s doing and stares back.

 

Her focus is intense and unwavering, like she’s trying to puzzle out his identity, divine his true self. Which would be unnerving on its own, but there’s something dark in her gaze, as well, in the way she leans draped over the wheel, staring down at him on the deck; something distinctly predatory, distinctly Captain Hook. It makes him want to tense his shoulders, shift his weight evenly on feet held shoulder-width apart, but he doesn’t. He catches that she’s moved from observation to communication and means it as a dare, and he almost raises an eyebrow in challenge, but if ever they were to have a thing, their thing would be a lack of acknowledgement, and so he restrains himself; merely lets his arms hang relaxed and head tilt slowly back.

 

The longer he looks, the more he sees, and he catches something underneath, something blackly beseeching, and Eric reviews his assumptions, and wonders at his knowledge of the avoidance tactics of Killian Jones. She shifts, and his gaze is pulled from her eyes to a square of something in her hand. Something is embossed on the surface in gold, and it shines dully in the fading light. Eric wonders at it.

 

(It never occurs to him to just _look away_ , and it never really will.)

 

 

 

FIN

 

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by me with a bad head cold, so I probably missed some things. Mostly in the tenses, I feel like. Concrit is more than welcome. Thank you for reading.


End file.
